Mitt Romney, during campaign stops in Michigan yesterday, embraced his Michigan roots for all they’re worth. As he watches his popularity plummet in the state in which he grew up, he seems to be grasping at anything to keep from sinking any further.
Romney tried to hit all the right buttons in order to resonate with Michigan voters leading up to their February 28 primary, by making himself one of them again. “I was born and raised here. I love being in Michigan,” Mr. Romney said. ”Everything seems right here. You know, I come back to Michigan; the trees are the right height. The grass is the right color for this time of year, kind of a brownish-greenish sort of thing. It just feels right.”
As if those bizarre references weren’t enough to make one scratch their head, the candidate went on to further befuddle his audiences by offering up a paean to the state’s Great Lakes.
”I like seeing the lakes. I love the lakes. There’s something very special here. The Great Lakes, but also all the little inland lakes that dot the parts of Michigan.”
“You know, we’ve been to Massachusetts. I love the ocean, too, I do love the ocean, but there’s something special about lakes, where you don’t get salt on you after you’ve been swimming, where there’s no seaweed, where you don’t have to worry about things eating you in the water,” Mr. Romney said.
And of course, any speech in Michigan must mention the automobile industry, and Mr. Romney didn’t miss that opportunity to connect with car lovers state wide.
“I grew up totally in love with cars,” he said. “It used to be in the 50s and 60s, if you showed me one square foot of almost any part of a car I could tell you what brand it was, the model and so forth. Now with all the Japanese cars I’m not so good at it, but I still know the American cars pretty well.”
Mr. Romney told the crowd that he drives a Mustang.
“I love American cars, and long may they rule the world,” he said. “Let me tell you, I want them to do well.”
Thankfully he stopped slathering on all the disingenuous praise before he got down to mentioning how much he loves the peat industry and noting that Michigan is number one in the nation in the production of that product, or expressing his love for the Petoskey stone, the state’s official state stone. And he never once mentioned the state’s importance in the history and production of breakfast cereals, or the fact that Vernor’s ginger ale, created in Detroit, was the nation’s first soda pop, introduced in 1866. Hopefully those omissions won’t cost him a valuable demographic group or two at the polls later in the month.
If this wooden, contrived, campaign style in his home state, among the people with whom he grew up, is what he thinks passes for effective messaging, then President Obama has nothing to fear from Mitt Romney in November. If for no other reason, because with this type of embarrassing pandering, Romney seems increasingly less likely to be his party’s nominee in the first place.
spydersden 
I understand what Mitt meant. I think you have to leave Michigan and then come back to understand. I spent 35 years there (UM ’06) and I’ve been in different parts of the country until settling in California.
The trees in other places are “managed”. In California & D.C. the trees are trimmed regularly. In Alaska & Texas the weather keeps the trees from growing as large as Michigan. Michigan’s trees are as tall as they can be. And then they magically bloom into a fire-y rainbow every October. Only Oregon has trees as wild as Michigan, but they are mostly firs and aren’t as beautiful.
I took the trees for granted when I lived there. Now that I’ve been to other places I understand just how beautiful Michigan’s trees truly are.
I still think that his manner of speaking is stilted and uncomfortable, and that his brain doesn’t allows properly engage his mouth, allowing for some pretty bizarre things to spill out. I live five miles from Michigan and worked in Michigan for many years. I have never heard a Michigander speak of the trees being just the right height, or the grass being just the right shade of green and brown this time of year. Would you have me believe that there is a uniformity of height which all Michigan trees attain, so that there are none outside of this particular norm? I actually see a lot of variation of height in the trees in Michigan, as I do anywhere else I’ve been. I just think Mitt doesn’t know how to speak to people in a way that connects, and his failure to rise above about thirty five percent in any polls of Republican voters shows how badly he is missing that connection.
You should come to Minnesota.
I agree. In Minnesota the trees are just the right height.
You have that right. A lot more trees and one would assume, even more that are just the right height.
Bob
Tom, thats a joke. What are you, a tree expert or something? You can’t just claim that Michigans trees are more wild than other places. Nobody trims the top of our trees in California (where im from) or Texas (where i am currently). Mitt Romney is just a pollitical hack and he will say and do anything to get elected.
Well,thru all that mumbo jumbo,did he mention any plans that he may have to strengthen the auto industry? Or the economy in general? Or his plan to lower gas prices? Or anything that matters at all? Did he talk about Romneycare? And what it may cost Michigan if he implements it there? Did he say how he would revamp obamacare?
Of course not. He has no plans for any of those issues, nor anything else of substance that I can ascertain.
What a knucklehead………Sounded like a 2nd grader….”I like cars, trees and lakes…..That speech will be good ammunition for the Democrats…. C. Foxx